Anything nuclear need not explode
Nuclear families? This bomb exploded over Kerala and other parts of India only after the Second World War. It was a bomb exploded by young rebels harassed, brow-beaten and lorded over by autocratic uncles and heads of families.And what a havoc it has wreaked on a well-knit family system, which had its own inbuilt shortcomings. It reduced rich families that had farm lands producing more than enough for feed, need, seed and even greed to 5-cent owning ‘proud’ units struggling to raise garden plants and queuing up before ration shops!
Now, what image one forms of the people of Madhya Pradesh who are bracketed under the ‘BiMaRU’ (sick) brand? I’d rather define the’Ma’ in Bimaru as Malanadu. Look at what is happening in this God’s Own Country. Aren’t we really sick? Here is an example of a joint family in a small town of MP which is also nuclear. It is not a figment of imagination; but true as day light. We can call the head of the family ‘Panditji’ as he was a Brahmin, erudite, articulate, well informed and above all a nice person.
Panditji was the owner of a small industry based on farm products, had substantial land holdings and ancestral family fortunes which made his family a leading rich one, though he was not the richest. But nobody commanded as much respect as this person. He had one daughter and four sons.
His eldest son was good in studies and became a doctor. The daughter was married off and lived with her husband’s family, as was the custom. The doctor married his classmate, another doctor, outside his caste without parental consent and chose to live separately. Alarm bells started ringing in the head of Panditji as his three other sons couldn’t go beyond matriculation level. These sons who wanted to settle down in life were raring up to ask for division of the family property. The wise old man visualised the future of his sons, in such an event, as selling more than half of their share of property, building houses and squandering the rest of the money on the pretext of setting up businesses. Panditji had not recovered from the parting of ways by his doctor son. Despite having a low-caste wife he would have welcomed him, wife and all, without any reservation. As Panditji knew the talents of his sons, he ordered them to obey his commands and take up the responsibility of running the home. He gave the charge of the factory to one, farm lands to another and set up a medical shop for the third.
Before the marriages of the sons, he added four self-contained apartments to the family home without any separate entrance from the main road so that the whole complex looked like a single house. The apartments having all basic facilities were allotted to each one asking them to add interior decoration as per their taste and capacity. They were to celebrate all occasions including festivals with the parents. Each son excelled in his job as their extra earnings brought them luxuries for their own rooms. Who was it that said that ‘the family that prays together, stays together? They had the best of both the worlds. The town thought they were having a joint family.